Fans are flocking to pose in front of the 'Bird Box' house

The Sandra Bullock sci-fi thriller has become such a phenomenon that hundreds of fans have travelled to the Californian house where it was filmed to have their photo taken in front of it, and it's inspired all sort of crazy blindfolded activities, from supermarket shopping to hugging wild alligators. We take an unrestricted view of the real-life locations behind the film, and where to find that house

Netflix is talking about 45 million viewing accounts, the Bird Box Challenge (intricate activities performed under blindfold, inspired by Sandra Bullock’s character) is causing international panic, memes are spreading like some sort of avenging supernatural demon, but why? Like the worldwide suicide plague at its heart, the cause of Bird Box’s staggering success remains a mystery. A cast including Bullock, Moonlight’s Trevante Rhodes and John Malkovich certainly helps, as does the very highest of horror high-concepts. Not to be ignored, though, is the hugely effective use of two contrasting locations: one manmade, familiar and horribly claustrophobic, and the other wild, unpredictable and all too open.

California

Josh Malerman’s 2014 source novel was set in Detroit, but for the film version the team behind Bird Box took advantage of the varied terrain of the state of California. For much of the movie, our heroine Malorie (Bullock) is holed up in a large house with a motley crew of fellow survivors, including the cantankerous Douglas (Malkovich). Filming took place over six weeks in a house on Sunset Boulevard’s Pacific Palisades portion but for exterior shots they used a mansion on North Canyon Boulevard in Monrovia, a town to the north-east of Los Angeles. Dating to the early 20th century, it’s said to have featured in several TV and film productions before; this time, apparently, the owners received $12,000 for its use, which they might have raised if they’d known how many blindfolded selfies were going to be taken on their steps.

Josh Malerman’s 2014 source novel was set in Detroit, but for the film version the team behind Bird Box took advantage of the varied terrain of the state of California. For much of the movie, our heroine Malorie (Bullock) is holed up in a large house (pictured above) with a motley crew of fellow survivors, including the cantankerous Douglas (Malkovich). Filming took place over six weeks in a house on Sunset Boulevard’s Pacific Palisades portion but for exterior shots they used a mansion on North Canyon Boulevard in Monrovia, a town to the north-east of Los Angeles. Dating to the early 20th century, it’s said to have featured in several TV and film productions before; this time, apparently, the owners received $12,000 for its use, which they might have raised if they’d known how many blindfolded selfies were going to be taken on their steps.

The junction outside the house also appears in the scenes before Malorie takes refuge, but the dramatic car crash preceding it was filmed in numerous CA locations. Her sister Jessica (Sarah Paulson, pictured above) drives the pair through Canoga Park and La Puente before turning their car at a junction in Sierra Madre – the meeting of North Hermosa Avenue and Sierra Madre Boulevard is now a popular photo point too.

For the scenes filmed in the boat, with Malorie and two children attempting to reach safety, the production moved north to Del Norte County and the Smith River (pictured below). Head of the local film commission Cassandra Hesseltine told her local paper that the movie’s scout team asked if she knew of a river ‘with an epic fork’, so she sent them direct to the Smith. She was right, as Bird Box location manager Phillip Jordan Brooks confirmed: ‘You won’t find another river that has its unique beauty anywhere else in the state.’

Known for its rafting-adventure rapids and waterfalls as well as some good fishing, this river runs for 25 miles through forest with long stretches of uninhabited bank that might have been designed for post-apocalyptic movie-making. Malorie and the two children set off from a house at North Bank Road to the north of Crescent City, the local town where the crew made their base, and filming continued at various stretches of its Middle Fork, employing smoke machines for the ever-present fog and drones for the agoraphobia-inducing long shots.

The area also provided plenty in the way of forest, since the Smith runs through the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park (pictured above). Encompassing 10,000 acres of redwoods, this takes its name from the same 19th-century fur-trapper and explorer as the river, though its greatest claim to fame is probably its role as planet Endor, home of the Ewoks, in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983). That said, for the really big redwoods the team headed to the south of the state and Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, near Santa Cruz.

The final scenes, where Malorie and the children reach safety, took the production back to the Los Angeles area. The long-sought sanctuary they find is in fact Scripps College in Claremont, to the east of the city, a prestigious women’s university that rejoices in the highly appropriate motto Incipit Vita Nova, or ‘Here Begins A New Life’. Built in Spanish Colonial Revival style in the 1920s, it provides the beautiful internal Balch Hall courtyard, lined with trees and columns, where Malorie finally finds the prospect of hope – and stands in the light blindfold-free. After the fear and tension of the preceding two hours, it’s a pastoral idyll that could be enough to explain the film’s success on its own.